Sidney D. Gamble (1890-1968), an avid amateur photographer, began taking pictures in China during his first trip to the country with his family in 1908. He returned three more times between 1917 to 1932 and continued photographing the daily life of Chinese citizens. A sociologist and renowned China scholar, he traveled throughout the country to collect data for social-economic surveys and to photograph urban and rural life, public events, architecture, religious statuary, and the countryside. Gamble used a few of the photographs from his extensive collection in his scholarly publications (https://guides.library.duke.edu/Gamblephotos/research) and in slide lectures, the majority of images were never published or exhibited during his lifetime.

ABSTRACTThe Sidney D. Gamble collection
consists primarily of contact sheets, hand-colored glass slides, 35mm duplicate slides,
contact prints, negatives, and other photographic formats documenting Gamble's four visits
to China from 1908 to 1932. In total, there are over 5,000 unique images in the collection
depicting urban and rural life, economic conditions, public events, agriculture, religious
statuary, architecture, and the countryside. In addition to photographs of China, the
collection contains a handful of images captured by Gamble from Japan and Korea and images
captured by David Gamble in the western United States, circa 1906. Also included are
artifacts, audiovisual materials, including moving images captured by Gamble in China from
1926 to 1933, scrapbooks, a small selection of Gamble's personal papers, and records of the
Sidney D. Gamble Foundation for China Studies, which relate to the exhibition of Gamble's
photographs in China and the United States, 1980s-2000s. Acquired as part of the Archive of
Documentary Arts at Duke University.

Hello! This is my first blog as the new Digital Production Service Manager, and I’d like to take this opportunity to take you, the reader, through my journey of discovering the treasures that the Duke Digital Collections program offers. To personalize this task, I explored the materials related to my family’s journey to the United … Continue reading My Family Story through the Duke Digital Collections Program→